‘Be different, yes!’ she says, sitting across from him and looking him in the eye. ‘Be centred, be wise. Be as human as you can be, for it is your humanity that can withstand the call of the magic that corrupted your parents. Go to school, have friends, learn to laugh a little, even, but there is no doubt about this one thing. You were born to fight them, Bavar. It is your duty, and you’ve only just begun.’
He lays his head on the table, and I wish she hadn’t said that. It doesn’t feel right, to make him do what he doesn’t want to. Even if part of me still wants him to. Even if I think he’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I wish I could fight like that. I wonder if he ever saw the way it changes him. The way his whole body seems to come alive, shining bright. I wonder if he knows that it isn’t all dark and evil; that when he’s fighting, he’s living harder than I ever saw anybody live, and it shows in his eyes.
‘But—’
‘Bavar, that’s enough. We have company,’ Aoife says. ‘Let me get out that cake. I made a lovely chocolate cherry one; the sugar will do you good. And it’s Uncle Sal’s favourite, so he’ll come and join us, and you can meet him, Angel.’
Bavar groans, his head still on the table, and she shakes her head as she pulls a great glass dome towards us, a mountain of dark something inside. She lifts her head and calls out, ‘SAL! CAKE!’ and Bavar sinks even lower in his seat, and I feel sorry for him, but also I can’t help it – I LOVE THIS. She’s so weird, the cake is so gruesome, and Uncle Sal, when he comes in, is such a contrast to it all. He’s small and round and balding, with thick black-framed glasses, and the expression on his face isn’t exactly kindly, but he’s about as scary as pudding, and somehow, even after everything that just happened, and even though I’m worried about Bavar, somehow these three people make me smile on the inside.
Dreams that stay when I’m awake, of the raksasa, and darker demons treading on their tails. Screeches that ring in the air, and heat, and a girl in the middle of it all, cool as water, bright as the sun.
Why does a human girl want to wade into a storm like that? Did she say? She said something, but it won’t come to me now. It dances in tatters and won’t come clear.
She didn’t run.
She came into the monster house and she smiled. She looked around as if she’d never close her eyes again, and she smiled when her name echoed around the house, and I don’t know what’s going on any more.
It was simple, before. I was going to hide, and the raksasa were going to get bored and go home, and I was going to just be here, just quietly, and sometimes that seemed like a terribly lonely thing, but it was safe, and I wouldn’t make mistakes with the barrier – I’d keep it strong, always – and after a while the raksasa would leave us alone, and now we’ve ruined everything. Now I’ll be just like my parents were, before they left me here. I’ll be a monster of a different kind; a monster who will lose his humanity and live for the fight and the glory of the win, past caring for anything else.
The ancestors sang a racket about an angel who they don’t understand is actually just a girl with bright hair, and I never saw a smile like that before. So I don’t think she’s about to go anywhere. She never retreated and she never would have. I saw from the look on her face. That expression, I’ve seen it before. On my mother’s face, as she went into battle.
That’s how this place changes you. Over time, little by little, so you don’t even really notice. Skin harder, brighter; blood stronger. And then more, more – I don’t know when it happened, not exactly, but one day I looked at her and she was barely there at all. Her blue eyes glinted with silver, her teeth were sharper, in some lights they looked just like jagged points. They fought their monsters, held their parties, and when we did go into town, there was a feral, wild look in my father’s eyes that frightened me, like he just saw animals. He stopped hunching, rose to his eight-foot height and the air around him rang like a bell, deafening, and nobody saw us. The magic was too powerful; it was a mirror that they held between us and the real world. But I always wanted to be seen. That’s why I agreed to go to school. To be part of it all. I just never expected it to actually happen. For anybody to really truly see me, just as I am.
‘They see me now,’ I say out loud. ‘Now that Angel is there. She muddles it all up . . .’
There’s no answer. I’m talking to myself. Aoife comes, and goes, and then she tells me the raksasa is gone. They crumble to dust in the light of dawn, like they never were. But the scratches are real, burning on my skin. I tell her they suit me, and Aoife gives me a despairing look.
‘You saved her, Bavar! You saved her, stopped that creature from doing harm, and still you hide here? Still you hide from what you are?’
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘Thank you, yes.’
She shakes her head and I know that however hard she tries to reassure me, deep down she’s afraid I’ll be just like them. Despite school, Angel, everything else, she’s afraid that eventually I’ll be a fighter, before anything else, and long after everything else is gone.
‘Where were you hurt?’ she demands.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Bavar, stop it. If you were scratched, we have to deal with it.’
‘Deal with it. Yes.’
She mutters about poison and medicine, and how my body will get used to it in time, as I grow in power and strength, as I fight more of them.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No thank you.’ I sit up, visions of brightness dancing in front of my eyes. ‘Did you see the angel? Where did it go?’
She leans in, touches my face. And then she huffs and goes to see Grandfather. She never goes to see Grandfather. She spent a lot of the time he was alive avoiding him and she always says she’s not going to go courting a bronze statue, thank you very much.
But off she goes, muttering. Like, to be a fly on that wall.
The stuff in the cup is bog-green and it smells awful. Aoife is urging me to drink it, but there’s no way.
‘There is a way,’ I tell her. Her eyes are bright, and light sparkles all around her in little swimming points. ‘Grandfather said there is. There’s a door to the rift . . . the door, and they opened it . . . and so it can be closed.’
I’m sure I remember him saying something about a door. I can’t get it straight in my mind though; everything else is in the way. I bat the cup away and the green stuff splatters on the carpet.
‘Bavar, you’re not making any sense at all,’ she says, and her voice is tired and it sounds like it cares but it wants me to fight, so I lie down because it’s confusing and hot and I don’t understand.